Sad All The Way Around - Oakland, CA

This is a discussion on Sad All The Way Around - Oakland, CA within the In the News: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly forums, part of the The Back Porch category; Oakland mom mourns for 2nd slain son
Mona Hall buried her 22-year-old son in 1992 after he was gunned down in front of her East ...

Sad All The Way Around - Oakland, CA

Mona Hall buried her 22-year-old son in 1992 after he was gunned down in front of her East Oakland home. Now she's burying her second and only remaining child, who also lost his life to gun violence over the weekend.

Bobby Hall II, 25, was shot and killed at about 11 p.m. Saturday as he visited friends at an apartment on the 6800 block of MacArthur Boulevard in East Oakland. No arrests have been made.

Hall's mother said he was a maintenance man and aspiring rapper who never sold drugs or got into trouble with the law. "To put it bluntly, he wanted a job at a bank," she said Monday.

Hall and her husband, Bobby Hall Sr., are now reliving the ordeal of having to bury a son. On June 29, 1992, their first-born son, Jesse Hall, 22, was shot and killed as he sat in a car outside the family's home in the Sobrante Park neighborhood in East Oakland.

To help channel her feelings, Mona Hall, 56, wrote a book that came out last year. It's called, "Thru a Mother's Eyes: The Story of Jesse Rahim Hall, My Murdered Child."

She has plans for a second book.

"It's crazy," she said. "We can't believe that we're reliving this nightmare all over again."

In May, Bobby Hall Sr. celebrated his 60th birthday with his son serving as DJ at a party at their home.

On Saturday night, he had to identify his son through a digital photo of the crime scene shown to him by police.

"He had a warm heart. He was a real caring person," his father said Monday.

While in junior high, young Bobby wrestled competitively. During one meet, he hurt his opponent, who ended up on the mat, not moving. "Bobby sat next to him and started crying, that's how caring he was," the elder Hall said.

"I've lost both of my sons, both of them I lost to these streets."

Bobby Hall Sr. said he suspects his son was somehow set up, because "he wasn't there for 10 minutes" before the gunman came up and shot his son in the head through a picture window.

"I hope they get caught real soon," he said of the assailant.

Oakland homicide Lt. Ersie Joyner said Monday that it was too early to tell whether the victim was ambushed. Joyner said investigators were looking at all angles in the aftermath of the slaying, Oakland's 73rd homicide this year.

The family has been especially hit hard by violence. In 1993, Mona Hall's nephew was killed after a confrontation that began when a girl got squirted by a water gun and someone responded by firing a real weapon. In 1994, her brother was gunned down in Sobrante Park.

Mona Hall had harsh words Monday for the gun industry.

"As long as the gunmakers are getting their profits, they're going to continue to shell out all these big guns," she said. "And I feel like they have never experienced what we the poor people have experienced down here in the trenches. They apparently have never experienced losing someone like I have, like my family has."

Bobby Hall II was born Sept. 5, 1982, with a patch of gray hair on the top of his head. Bobby told people, "It's not gray, it's platinum." He graduated from Castlemont High School in East Oakland.

When Jesse Hall was gunned down, his brother was especially vigilant as he neared his own 22nd birthday. When Bobby Hall turned 23, he was triumphant and told his mother, "I think I'm going to make it."

"He was ecstatic," his mother said. Now, Mona Hall will have to go through the same grieving while at the same time deploring the violence that is plaguing her community.

"I'm tired of that," she said. "I'm tired of having to sit down and tell the younger children why their cousin, their brother, their nephew or their uncle isn't here anymore."

Sad that this poor woman has lost so many family members to gun violence. Sad that she can't see what is really responsible for the death of her sons. Just plain sad.

Condolences to the family. It's more than most go through. But then, much of Oakland has been a 'banger's dream for a few decades now. It's not like that's a surprise. Violent miscreants breed in such situations. Combine a rough neighborhood with poor economic and social opportunities for those who can't break out, and you've got a cauldron where folks are going to get burned.

"As long as the gunmakers are getting their profits, they're going to continue to shell out all these big guns," she said.

As long as the hatchet makers see trees to be cut, they'll make them. And some miscreants will misuse them to the point of murder. Just like anything else. Doesn't make them or the making of them evil.

The point comes home in situations like this: Guns don't kill people; People kill people. Cold as that seems, it's absolutely, utterly true. The unknown 'banger who committed this murder has issues, almost certainly wholly unrelated to Smith & Wesson.